Sunny Boy and His Playmates | Page 4

end where the ice was already cracking. But, somehow, people
do not stop to think when anything happens, and as soon as the boys
and girls--and men and women, too--who were skating on the pond saw
that something was happening at one end of the pond they skated there
as fast as they possibly could.
"You'd get along faster without your skates," said the big boy, "but I
won't try to take 'em off for you. We'd both be walked on while I was
doing it. Come on, we'll see if these folks are in too big a hurry to let us
get ashore with them."
Sunny Boy was not exactly frightened, but he felt rather queer.
Grandpa Horton was gone, a strange boy had him by the hand, and
many people kept shouting and making a loud noise. And now, instead
of clear, smooth ice under his skates, he seemed to be walking through
slushy water.
"Don't you get scared," said the big boy kindly. "We wouldn't drown if
we went right through the ice. It isn't very deep right here. Look
out--here we go!"
Sunny Boy cried out in surprise and a girl ahead of him screamed. The
ice seemed to part and let them down gently into the coldest water
Sunny Boy had ever felt. He had not known that water could be so
cold!

"You're all right," the big boy assured him, "Put your arms around my
neck and I'll carry you ashore. The girls make a lot of noise, don't they?
Well, in one way it's a good sign--as long as they can scream we know
they are not drowned."
The boy had a round, freckled face, and he grinned so cheerfully that
Sunny Boy had to smile back. The boy looked blue from the cold and
his coat was thin and shabby, if Sunny Boy had only noticed it, but he
talked every minute and didn't complain once. He showed Sunny Boy
how he wanted him to put his arms, and then he lifted him up and
carried him toward the bank.
"Good for you, Bob!" called some one, as the big boy reached the
shore.
"There you are," the boy said to Sunny, as he set him carefully down.
"Now you take my advice and trot along home and get on dry shoes
and stockings. You'll be sneezing your head off to-morrow, if you don't
look out."
"But I want my grandpa!" said Sunny Boy, beginning to cry. "I lost my
grandpa! Maybe he is all drowned!"
No wonder Sunny Boy cried at this sad thought. He loved his Grandpa
Horton very dearly and he was named for him, "Arthur Bradford
Horton." To be sure, no one ever called the little lad by that long name,
for "Sunny Boy" seemed to suit him so exactly. But, of course, when he
grew up and was a farmer or a traffic policeman or the captain of a
sailboat--he didn't know yet which he would rather be--he would need
his real name. Perhaps you know all about Sunny Boy. If so, we do not
have to introduce you. But if you have not read the other books about
him you will want to know that he lived with his daddy and his mother
and Harriet, who had helped his mother since Sunny Boy was a tiny
baby, in the city of Centronia and that Grandpa and Grandma Horton
lived on a beautiful farm, "Brookside," where Sunny Boy and his
mother had spent a month the summer before. The first Sunny Boy
book, called "Sunny Boy in the Country," tells all about this visit and
the friends Sunny Boy made there and about the kite he made which

got him into trouble. But that ended happily and Sunny Boy was so
happy at Brookside that he might have decided to be a farmer if he and
his daddy and mother had not gone to the seashore to visit his Aunt
Bessie.
"Sunny Boy at the Seashore" tells about the fun a small boy can find in
the sand and of Sunny Boy's experiences in sailing boats, and
especially about the time he drifted out to sea in a rowboat all by
himself. His mother and daddy, in another boat, found him, though, and
Sunny Boy thought he would like to be a sea captain like the kind
Captain Franklin who ran the motor-boat which caught up with him
just as he was beginning to be very much afraid he was lost.
Sunny Boy knew that he could not be a sea captain before he was
grown up, and long before that, the very next month, in fact, Daddy and
Mother Horton took him to New York City, and, dear me, didn't he find
adventures there! He was lost twice